A place for Beards to contemplate and grow their souls.

Month: October 2014

We have a themed Christmas party on Christmas Day at our house each year with about 30 friends who, like ourselves, do not have family here in San Diego. Last year was a Disco Christmas and everyone came dressed in 1970s attire. This year the theme is Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. So this Halloween season I’ve been picking up a few things Jack Skellington. Today I score this at Walgreen’s …half off…yeah!

Happy Halloween!

I’ve never had one of these blow up thingys. So tonight he will greet trick or treaters. On Christmas Day he will probably be somewhere near the bar.

Nina is doing great. She had her teeth cleaned Wednesday and had two small masses removed. Last night she was out of it from the anesthesia. Today she’s doing just fine. At 11.5 years old she’s a healthy girl and likes to play fetch. She will have been here three weeks tomorrow and has claimed her own spot. She gets along great with her five new siblings and is learning her place in the pack.

Three of Nina’s five new siblings are also rescues. Rescue pups really do bond with their new owners and seem to be thankful for the loving secure stable home. Nina does not seem to have been abused, just neglected for a year and a half after her owner passed away. She has yet to have barked or made a sound. She’s a good dog.

The San Francisco Giants won the World Series last night. The MVP award goes to this man who undoubtably was the key player in their win. It takes a whole team to win as without the full team support he could not do it alone. He set a record for the most innings pitched in a World Series and did it with an ERA under 0.50. He’s only 25 years old and this is his third World Series with the Giants, they have won all three.

Living in the city, or anywhere for that matter, we have graffiti. Once in a while it will have a good message. This one has been popping up in odd yet very visible places around my neighborhood recently. I like this one. I have only seen it from my car in several locations and it appears to be a preprinted post that someone is posting. It always makes me smile and think when I see it. I hope that I can live it’s message. I hope others get inspirations from it as well.

Street corner inspiration located at corner of Kettner and W Washington streets in San Diego CA 10-28-14.

I’m missing a friend. A blogger buddy that I popped in on most every day. He posted last week a warning that he had been hacked and not to open any e mails from him. Then over the weekend his blog started giving a message it had gone private.

I am not sure what happened or the outcome. I miss him. Either his blog is no longer or it is going private only for invitees and as of yet I’m not one.

I’m new at this so have not lost a blogger buddy until now. I will miss him greatly and hope he one day returns. He entertained many as He had a large following and I used to read his blog from time to time before I started Fearsome Beard. After starting up I became a daily reader and received many clicks to my blog from his. I sincerely hope he’s ok and that the “hacking” was minor.

I want to thank him for the support he gave me as a new blogger, for joining me in a meditation series and for all the insight and entertainment he provided. Who knows maybe we will all see him again soon, I sure hope so!

Each day I have a choice the moment the alarms goes off or Mitzi wakes before it and gives me a little kiss on the face to say “daddy I need to go out”. The choice in that hazy moment of slumber to wakefulness is how I feel, how do I wish to start this day?

Today I choose joy.

It’s so easy to go through the waking up process and forget to choose how I am going to view the day and ultimately let some unfortunate stub of my toe, or the like, choose how I will start that day for me. I have found that if I remind myself to choose at my waking moment how I want to start my day, how I want to feel and what I want to give those I touch that day, my day will go well and I have a good one.

May you have a good day, a day filled with Joy!

Check out all the wonderful synonyms of joy! I can experience many or all of those if I only choose to. And those antonyms…nope I don’t want those. Make your choice, the choice is yours and have a great day.

Yep it’s that time again, we are inundated with TV ads, mailers and e mails.

Smear, smear, schmear!

The spin these campaigns can give us. Spin this way, spin that way, spin it till confusion seems the norm. It’s a competition for the candidate or the proposition campaign to see who can tear the other one down the most. Negativity rules!

All I can say is that I try my best to ignore them completely. I believe campaigns are not really about educating you, they are about trying to win you to their way of thinking and getting you to vote their way through our most basic instinct, the instinct of fear.

I ask you this, when have you made your best decisions? Have you made them through fear or through level headed educated thinking?

I try to read and educate myself as much as I can. I try to avoid campaign propaganda. I try to make decisions as best I can from a calm educated point of view. I try to make my voting decisions with those things that resonate with my values.

We all have different values. We should choose what resonates with our own values not someone else’s. Most of all we should not act through fear. Fear is not a rational place to make decisions, important decisions.

So wherever you are, whatever your political stance please educate yourself and find what resonates with your values then vote.

Tune out the ads and vote. Many people in our world don’t have that choice, a choice too many Americans take for granted and don’t exercise. We have that choice and each vote does make a difference. Voting makes us stronger.

There will always be rain at times in our life but if you just look a little further the sun is always shining on the other side of those clouds. May Gene Kelly bring a smile to your face today, he always does mine.

So yesterday I am in the changing room after yoga and run into a neighbors son. I’ll call him Scott for easy reference, not his name but this is the internet so let’s keep it protected. Scott says hello and gives me the news that his father had a heart attack the night before. He said his dad was doing well it was not severe and would be having a procedure to aid in his recovery. We talked for a moment and I assured him from what I know about that procedure his dad would do well and actually feel much better afterward. (I worked as a respiratory therapist for many years in cardiac units so am actually experienced in the arena.)

Scott continued that his dad would be coming home soon and I offered for him to let me know anything I could do to help. He then said “there is something you can do” and I said “sure, what is it?” He said “well it’s your dogs, they wake my parents up at night and I want to make sure that my father can rest and recover when he gets home.” To which I replied “I’m sorry but I do not see how as we go to bed at about 9 pm and the dogs sleep in the house with us.” Scott continued by saying “both mom and dad have complained to me about your dogs several times.”

I was taken aback by the accusation. So I restated that it could not be my dogs as they never sleep outside and are always inside with me at night and that also are never outside unless I am home as they stay inside when I leave as well, they are never un-monitored. At that point I was dressed and made my way out to my car.

Now we get to perception.

Off the top of my head I can count that we live on a block that has at the minimum 16 dogs. Across the street there are many more. Neighbors walk dogs on our street starting before dawn until well after dark. The neighborhood is full of many dogs at all times of day. Some neighbors do leave their dogs out at night. So obviously there is a perception that the dogs waking his parents up at night is my dogs when it isn’t. Mine not only sleep in the house, but in my room. If they made noise at night I would know. So that’s his perception.

Then there is my perception that I have been accused of something I haven’t done. I have to ask myself “was he accusing me? Or was this something he would or will say to all the neighbors with dogs?” I have to say it felt like an accusation. But I have to step back and think this through and act in the best I can.

I have to realize he is trying to protect his dad as this is a stressful time for him. I do have dogs that when are outside when I am here during the day, do bark when someone approaches their fence or hear another dog bark, which I can try to minimize when possible. I have lived near his father with several dogs at all times for 22 years and have not ever had a complaint about being woken up, but maybe on that once in a blue moon occasion that we came home late from a play or something and let them out to pee at midnight they may have disturbed someone for the few minutes they were out.

What can I do? I feel it’s best to write then let it sit for a while. A few weeks after his dad is safely home and recovering well, maybe I should ask his dad if my dogs bother him. Reassure his dad that we are responsible owners and will do all we can to minimize noise and ask him to call if ever there is a problem. Also let his dad know that our dogs do sleep in our house, in our room and if he’s being awakened after 9 pm let’s talk and work together to figure out who’s dogs might be the problem.

Back in the mid 1970s when I was about 10 (had not hit puberty yet so it was about then) I went with a friend to his grandmother’s house in West Virginia. We went with his whole family for a week visit in order to go to the West Virginia state fair. I remember it fondly. We had a blast. He had two brothers and the four of us were dropped off every day and could roam, ride rides, play games and do whatever we wanted. That was the early 1970s in a small town at a state fair. Drop the kids off, let them have at it and pick them up in time for dinner.

By the end of that week all the carnies knew us by name and we knew all of them. We knew which ride to ride at what time of day for the best effects. They had one of those double Ferris wheels with two wheels that were on opposite ends of a long center post. The best was when they put your wheel at the top and filled the other one you would just spin for a long time way up in the air. Then when they started the whole thing spinning as you dropped down the front it was like the floor fell out of the world.

I learned to ride a horse on the streets around his grandmothers house. We learned how to shoot guns. We waxed his grandmothers’s 1967 baby blue mustang. We ate real home cooked food. We took walks on country roads. And we went back to the fair. No worries, carefree…damn it was nice!

Then everything stopped. It really did stop. We were on the midway of the fair and an announcer came over the loud speaker and asked that everyone stop. The music stopped, the rides stopped and all got quiet. Then they announced it, Elvis had died. I’m serious. I know where I was and what I was doing at such a young age and I didn’t even care for Elvis. They stopped our perfect world to tell us that? Bummer.

Well apparently even though we didn’t give a rats ass about Elvis, there were others at that place and time who did care. People were crying. Hysteria, sadness, disappointment and the silence of disbelief surrounded us. Ok, ok looking back… it was the West Virginia state fair in the mid 1970s….where else would Elvis fans be?

Eventually after what seemed like hours but was probably all of 15-30 minutes the fair resumed and we went about our business terrorizing the midway and having a ball again. The rest of the day the adults seemed sad and joyless but we didn’t. We had rides to ride and goldfish to win. That night Billy Crash Craddock was the headliner and opened his show with Blue Suede Shoes as a tribute to Elvis. We didn’t care we were up on that double Ferris wheel spinning at the top, this time in the dark! Woohoo!

Music plays such a part of growing up. The music on the midway was popular rock of the time. Gary wright was played a lot at that fair. My favorite was Love Is Alive. It played several times daily at one of our favorite rides. The carnie that ran that ride was long haired, muscular, probably missing a tooth or three and had a big porn star mustache. He liked his Gary Wright tunes. Love Is Alive burned into my memory that summer. It was my song of the summer that year.

At the time those words did not mean what they do to me today. At the time it was a cool tune. Today I like the title. Love Is Alive.

Love makes me feel alive. Love is an expression of life, of living. When I find myself out of sorts if I can stop and feel some love for someone or something I feel better. I feel alive. The love for my husband, my dogs, a friend, my family, my home, my work, my city, the ocean, nature or just where I am at that moment. Love is everywhere, all we have to do is feel it and we are alive.

It’s amazing what can come out of a memory of the place you were when Elvis died ain’t it? 😉